Eahil Dublin 2009 Workshop

Researchers and their library - parties apart or invisible colleagues?

Presenters: Birgitta Stevinger, Anna Persson and Anna-Carin Wodlén
Authors: Ann-Mari Holst, Anna Persson, Birgitta Stevinger and Anna-Carin Wodlén, Biomedical Library, Gothenburg University Library, Gothenburg, Sweden.

The Biomedical Library is a part of Gothenburg University Library. The library supply service to two faculties, the Sahlgrenska academy with a staff of more than 1400 and the Faculty of Science 800. The staff at the Biomedical library consists of 30 employees, mainly qualified librarians. Background:
In 2007 the library was reorganized and the old departments were replaced with a team organization. Four teams are function oriented but in order to enhance communication with and information channels to researchers and students two new "horizontal" teams were formed. The members of the research team represent the areas of acquisition, education and customer service.

Objectives: In order to change working routines, enhance communication and to develop new services the “Research team” wanted to get a better view of the researchers information needs and a better knowledge of how they communicates with the library staff. Do the researchers think of our e-services as a contact with the library? What services are used and are the supplied service to their satisfaction? Do they demand user education? Are there areas where the library fails to supply high quality service? A study concerning these areas was performed in April 2008. A follow up with in depth interviews with researchers will take place in November/December 2008.

Methods: Literature studies concerning the relationship between researchers and academic libraries were performed. Were there any equal studies, what methods were used and could we find questions with relevance for the objectives of our study? The team decided to ask twenty closed questions, three of them with the option to add comments. The questions were based on three areas of special interest; acquisition, customer service and education. The questions were formed with the intent to simultaneously educate the user. Age, gender and institutional assignment were
also of interest. A web questionnaire was used and an email letter containing a link to the questionnaire was posted to 2598 respondents in spring 2008.

Results: 896 responded, the answering frequency was 34.59%. 87.4% states that they never or very seldom visit the library. To order articles/books/journals, access problems and renewal of their Library card are the most common contacts! Although most researchers are very pleased with the supply of journals, a number of people complained about the lack of literature, especially e-journals in their own field! We found huge disparities in the use of printed books. 75% of researchers in nursing and allied health use books as a resource but only 30% in the department of biomedicine. A large number requested user education in databases and reference programmes.

Conclusions: The large number of respondents has given us a lot of information on how researchers use their library. We will follow up with in depth interviews this autumn to get an even clearer view in some areas. User statistics will be more used and we encourage researchers to be more involved in the acquisition process! Some responses also point at new areas for the library to look into!

Researchers and professional librarians as co-teachers – collaboration in teaching using the theory of constructive alignment

Presenter: Yvonne Hultman Özek
Author: Yvonne Hultman Özek, Library and ICT, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.

This paper will focus on the present state and further development for the compulsory postgraduate one-week course “Scientific communication” where researchers and librarians collaborate in order to increase the quality of the course. The constructive alignment theory (Biggs, Tang et al. 2007) is used to create a common language around pedagogical issues.

The course is, upon assignment of the Postgraduate education committee of the Faculty of Medicine, organized by the Library and ICT unit of the faculty. The core of the content of the course is derived from a previous one-day course which had focus on practical information literacy skills. Thus, analyzing the information retrieval and information management sections and expanding these towards a larger and more meaningful context in the area of scientific communication required an expansion of knowledge reaching beyond the expanded areas were; writing a scientific article, evaluation of research, writing popularized summary, constructive criticism. Consequently, the assignment to create an expanded course initiated collaboration with other professions at the faculty. The teachers in the team use similar teaching methods. A focus at all times on constructive alignment the red thread) in the teaching situation is necessary in order to keep a high quality in the course. Using a common language for pedagogical issues in the teaching team is essential.

The author see the collaboration in the teaching team as a professional development for the teaching librarians. The new challenges for the professional librarians will be discussed.

Exploring the use of library and information services (including CAS) in oncology healthcare contexts

Presenter: Ina Fourie
Authors: Ina Fourie, Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria & Suzanne Bakker, Central Cancer Library, The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Adapting and differentiating library and information services to the needs of user groups is an ever continuing process for which periodic user studies and studies on information behaviour may offer interesting insights into the diversity of needs and behaviours, even within the well-defined oncology healthcare context. The paper will report on studies conducted at the Central Cancer Library (The Netherlands Cancer Institute) including oncology healthcare professionals from different contexts e.g. oncology nurses, oncology nurse practitioners, physiotherapists, quality managers, psycho-oncology social workers, doctoral students, team leaders, educators and research staff.

Focus group interviews were supplemented by a very brief questionnaire to collect demographic data. Findings show that there are new roles for the library to fulfil as well as new challenges to face. Following a very brief overview of the scope of the study and the methods used, the paper will report on findings with regard to the use of the PUBMED CAS, the need for supplementary CAS (e.g. on other databases such as PsycINFO and the national catalogue) and alternative CAS (e.g. table of content services, book alerting services, newspaper clipping services) as well as the need for timely repackaged and value-added information (e.g. structured abstracts or annotations) for key literature especially in Dutch for English publications, as well as support in organising information collected. In addition there seems to be a need for the library to get involved in supporting collaborative information seeking and use.

Research Support Librarians in Irish Universities – A Case Study

Presenter: Jessica Eustace
Authors: Jessica Eustace (Trinity College Dublin), Rosarie Coughlan National University of Ireland Galway), Jack Hyland (Dublin City University), Aoife Geraghty (University of Limerick), National University of Ireland.

With the recent growth of interest in research at Irish universities, libraries have been challenged to provide support to their growing research communities in ways distinct from their existing undergraduate support systems. Dublin City university, Trinity College Dublin, National University of Ireland Galway and University of Limerick have responded to this challenge by appointing Research Support Librarians.

This paper looks at the different ways that the four University Libraries and the librarians appointed have addressed the needs of researchers. The roles and rremits of each of the Research Librarians will be explored, and the challenges and successes of the various approaches will be outlined. As the role evolves, the paper also looks to the future and to the potential for further collaboration both amongst Research Support Librarians nationally and internationally and the research communities they support in developing innovative Library systems and services aligned to the priorities of researchers.